


Operation Stuff the Turkey

by Ashling



Category: Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Pets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:40:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25541467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/pseuds/Ashling
Summary: “Hey, maybe I’m a good influence on you after all,” says Cassandra.“A good influence? Kid. Ew.”
Relationships: Cassandra Cain & Harleen Quinzel
Comments: 10
Kudos: 47
Collections: Battleship 2020, Battleship 2020 - Yellow Team





	Operation Stuff the Turkey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [girlsarewolves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlsarewolves/gifts).



“You know,” Cassandra says, “a normal mom would’ve just paid the transportation fee on time.”

Still staring at the safe, Harley wags a finger at her without looking. “Hey now, there’s lots of normal moms who get low on cash every now and then. You just…” She put on her specially-designed stethoscope and presses it to the safe. “...have to get creative.”

Cassandra huffs and looks around. Inside the principal’s office, everything is quiet and boring. Outside in the halls of the school, there’s quite a lot of shouting, screaming, and even some laughter. Plus inhuman cackling. 

“Why do you want to do this museum lock-in so bad, anyways?” says Harley. “I thought you said you hated art history.”

Cassandra slouches down against the desk and reaches for her phone so she can send a text. “Bethany’s going.”

“I see.”

“Shut up!” Cassandra crawls out from behind the principals desk and peeks out the window, just in time to catch the most magnificent splatter of yogurt across the ceiling. She looks around and sees that it was caused by a small white monkey named Moses, who is currently rifling through some poor kid’s lunchbox. “We better hurry before animal control gets here.”

 _Click_. “Got it.” Harley puts the envelope with the school trip deposit inside the safe, then closes the door and locks it again. “You know, I’ve cracked a lot of safes so I could take money out. Never cracked a safe so I could put money in.”

“Hey, maybe I’m a good influence on you after all,” says Cassandra. 

“A good influence? Kid. Ew.”

In the hall, two of the monkeys, Izzie and Bartholomew, have a baseball and are passing it over the heads of the gawking kids. The principal looks distraught. One or two of the teachers are trying not to laugh. Everyone’s given up on catching the monkeys, which Cassandra thinks is wise. If they don’t want to be caught, they never will be.

“Can we go now?” When Harley doesn’t reply, Cassandra looks around. Harley is feeding papers into the principal’s shredder. They look like pretty important documents. “What are those?” 

“Student disciplinary actions. I mean—” Harley waves one of the papers around. “—suspending this kid because he’s got a lot of lunch debt? Your school is trash.” She put it into the shredder. 

“Uh, yeah,” says Cassandra. “School is trash, I’ve been telling you. You’re the one that wants me to ‘socialize’ with ‘kids my own age’ and ‘learn how to write properly’.” She peppers in a lot of scare quotes.

“If you don’t know people, you don’t know how to lie to people. If you don’t know how to write fancy, you don’t know how to forge documents. Plus, college is fun! And you can’t get in without graduating middle school first.” Harley sighs, her head cocked to one side, watching the shredder working like crazy. “I miss my PhD days.”

“I’m not getting a—he’s coming. He’s coming!” Harley turns off the shredder as Cassandra dives behind the principal’s desk. There’s a huge pile of boxes, and they can both squeeze in between the boxes and a bookshelf to hide. Just barely.

 _Text Dinah,_ Harley signs at Cassandra. 

Cassandra’s still not very good at expressing herself in sign language, with a very limited vocabulary, but she knows the alphabet at least. _A-L-R-E-A-D-Y D-I-D,_ she signs back.

 _Genius,_ Harley signs, grinning, and Cassandra’s almost as pleased with herself as Harley is. Harley keeps calling her a genius, and amazing, and magnificent, and all kinds of crazy things, but Cassandra doesn’t hate it the way she usually does when people give her compliments.

They can both hear the principal making some very defeated-sounding calls to let the school superintendent know what’s happened. Then he types up an incident report. He’s just in the middle of a heated phone argument with his wife about whether or not they should go to her sister’s boyfriend’s improv class showcase when he yelps and drops the phone, which means Dinah has arrived.

Cassandra peeks.

“Hey,” says Dinah. “Are these all the monkeys you’ve got?” Bart is on her head, Izzie and Moses are each perched on one of her shoulders, and she’s carrying Connie in her left arm like a baby.

“I…are you from Animal Control?"

“This was supposed to be my day off,” says Dinah, in a Tone that means that Harley will probably get an earful at dinner later on. Cassandra glances at Harley; Harley holds up her hands, as if to say, _what can ya do?_ _  
_

“Oh,” says the principal, clearly unnerved by the near-angelic behavior of the monkeys, who are barely chattering, barely moving. “Okay. Uh. Can you take them away now, please? Like out of my office, and out of the school? Forever?”

“Got it,” says Dinah. “I just want to know where to send the bill. It’s extra because I’m not supposed to be on-call right now.”

As if on cue, Izzie yelps a couple times, and the principal jumps up like he’s been shot at.

“I’ll pay anything,” he babbles. “Here’s my card. Send the invoice to me, I’ll arrange it all. Just please, _please_ get out of here.”

“Look, I’d love to get out of here,” says Dinah, with an edge to her voice, “but we really gotta work this out. My boss has been on my ass these past couple weeks. Can you write the check now?” 

Harley seems to understand what Dinah is getting at; she pats Cassandra on the shoulder and tiptoes out of the boxes. They’re very quiet, passing behind the principal, but it helps that at this point, Connie and Moses start having a monkey-conversation.

When Harley reaches for the window latch, she makes a little sign with her hand and all four monkeys screech in unison so the sound covers up the sound of the window opening. The principal screams a little too, which is fun. Outside, there’s a couple of high school boys in the parking lot, smoking, but otherwise no witnesses. As Harley and Cassandra race through the parking lot towards Harley’s car, Cassandra cuts her eyes at the boys and makes a gesture with two fingers from her eyes to them: _don’t be a snitch._ One of them throws up a peace sign; the other one seems too high to even notice what’s going on.

They make it to the car and jump in. “Operation Stuff the Turkey is a success!” says Harley. She high-fives Cassandra. “You want some McDonald’s?"

Harley has clearly forgotten that Cassandra still has to go back to school, and that they owe Dinah a huge favor, and that they still owe like nine thousand dollars to a pretty mean lady. For now, Cassandra’s happy to forget all that too. “Yeah,” she says. “Two burgers. And I have hot sauce in my backpack.”

Harley beams. “Perfect.”


End file.
